3.15pm update

Government approves plans to relax human cloning

The government has today approved plans to clone embryo cells into human tissue for the treatment of currently incurable diseases. If they are adopted, the law on human cloning will be relaxed to allow scientists to take cells from young embryos and use them to grow skin and other tissue, which may help find cures for many diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and cystic fibrosis.

Ministers have endorsed the report by the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Liam Donaldson, on the issue of human embryo cloning, although MPs will decide on the proposals in a free vote later this year.

However, the new legislation will ban human cloning for reproductive purposes, ensuring scientists can never clone a whole baby.

The plans will allow all-purpose "stem cells," from which all embryos first develop, to be taken from human embryos under 14 days old and used in medical research.

Such research would necessarily involve cloning human cells to make embryos, which would be used to harvest healthy tissue to treat degenerative diseases. It is this aspect of the research which has today provoked controversy amongst religious and pro-life groups in the UK. Religious groups which believe any embryo is a human life are fiercely opposed to any relaxation of the law.

However, under the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, embryos of up to 14 days old can already be used for research into specific areas such as fertility, contraception, miscarriage and congenital disorders. The use of young embryos, many of which never fully develop, is an integral part of the long-accepted fertility treatment of IVF. Shadow Health Secretary Dr Liam Fox said that he intended "on principle" to vote against any relaxation of the rules. "There is genuine and deep-rooted political unease about many of the medical techniques we can now employ," he said.

At present there is no law expressly forbidding human cloning using the technique which produced Dolly the sheep, because such advances were not envisaged when the legislation was drafted. In practice, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority would never grant permission for reproductive human cloning.

However, the Government's plans will prevent any possibility of such work taking place. The new law will make it illegal to produce an embryo clone and plant it into a woman's womb.

Embryonic stem cells can develop into any kind of tissue in the body, including nerves, muscle, organs and bone, depending on which chemical signals they are given. Stem cells may be used in the future to make replacement tissue, which would revolutionise the treatment of burns, degenerative conditions such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, and spinal injuries.

Such therapeutic cloning also offers the possibility of overcoming the problem of transplant tissue rejection. An embryo cloned from a patient would yield stem cells which could be used to grow tissue compatible with the patient.

In December 1998 two advisory bodies, the Human Genetics Advisory Commission and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, recommended that the law should be relaxed to allow the use of early-stage human embryos for stem cell research.

The Medical Research Council today welcomed the recommendations in the report. Dr Diana Dunstan, the MRC's director of research management, said: "We welcome the report's recommendation that stem cell therapy and cell nuclear replacement should be permitted under strict legal controls, enforcing clear ethical principles.

"While growing whole organs for transplantation may be many decades away, the production of human nerve cells to treat people with Parkinson's and Huntington's disease could be an early benefit of this type of research."

"Our report offers a way to ensure that this potential can be fully explored, whilst ensuring full and rigorous safeguards. In particular reproductive cloning - the cloning of individuals - will remain banned in the UK."

A spokesman for the charity Life, which is strongly opposed to abortion and cloning, pointed to new research where stem cells had been taken from adults: "We do not need human cloning. We are on the brink of a major revolution in medicine using adult stem cells and exploring another recent discovery, namely that differentiated adult cells are capable of adaptation and mutation.

"Therapeutic cloning means killing. It is a further trivialisation of human life. It exploits human beings at the most vulnerable stage of their lives - it is neo-cannibalism."

Sign up for the Guardian Today

Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.